Death, Michael Jackson, and search engines

Having just found out that Michael Jackson had died (as well as Farrah Fawcett) from such sources as Facebook posts and The Onion, I decided to gather a bit more information on-line. I've also been curious about the Microsoft search engine for a while (disclaimer, I'm a rabid MS hater when it comes to Operating Systems, but not as much with other technologies), so I figured I would take this chance to run a little comparison. At this point, I still had no idea what had happened to Mr. Jackson.

A little earlier before I write this (at around 1930 hrs EST), typing the first letters of Michael Jackson's name (mich) in the search field in Google, it auto-completes it to "michael jackson died today" as the second option given. On Bing I get "Michael Jackson" in fifth spot. OK. So thanks to Google I'm starting to believe that the man had really died (or maybe that just a frigging lot of people were searching those words for no good reason).

The results page in Google starts with a "Related Searches" list, containing "michael jackson cardiac arrest", followed by "michael jackson heart attack." The first actual result is "News results for Michael Jackson", with a link to a Canadian story on his death ("Pop icon dies at 50"), including a bit of text explaining the how and the where ("cardiac arrest, in his Los Angeles home." OK, I can stop now, it seems I got everything I needed to know.

In Bing, my results page started with background links (official site, wikipedia, tickets, etc.) and in fifth, a link to a CNN story on his death ("Pop music legend dies at 50"). The summary text, copied here in full, was: "Michael Jackson, the show-stopping singer whose best-selling albums -- including 'Off the Wall,' 'Thriller' and 'Bad' -- and electrifying stage presence made him one of the most ..."

So, which one is better? Well, as a search engine, I'm not sure. But in this particular case it seems that Google did news parsing a bit better than Bing, showing a relevant news article on Mr. Jackson's death right on top, including a title and summary that contains all the basic info (what, how, where). The auto-completion gave the news right away. Pretty good. Meanwhile, Bing still showed a link to CNN on the first results page, so that's not bad either. You'd have had to click on it to find out how and where Mr. Jackson passed away.

R.I.P., Michael Jackson.

Indecency laws

There are times when I am forced to conclude that a significant percentage of Americans would much rather live under Taliban rule and Sharia law than under the US Constitution.

"Jail sentence for hentai owner raises First Amendment issues", at Ars Technica.